1919 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1919.

Events

February – Richmal Crompton's anarchic English schoolboy William Brown is introduced in the first published Just William story, "Rice-Mould", in Home magazine.
March 1 – October 15 – Publication runs of the American pulp magazine The Thrill Book are oriented towards the fantasy genre or science fiction. It includes the serialization of The Heads of Cerberus, written by Gertrude Barrows Bennett as Francis Stevens, with its early thematic use of an alternate time-track, or parallel worlds.
March – The diaries up to the end of 1917 from the English naturalist W. N. P. Barbellion are published as The Journal of a Disappointed Man in London by Chatto & Windus. This treats his resignation to the disease multiple sclerosis, of which he will die on October 22, aged 30, at Gerrards Cross.
March 28 – Two paintings by E. E. Cummings appear in an exhibition of the New York Society of Independent Artists.
April 2 – Vladimir Nabokov leaves Russia with his family.
April 7 – The anarchist writers Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam play leading roles in creating the Bavarian Soviet Republic. They are later joined by the essayist and debt relief advocate Silvio Gesell. Taken over by the Communist Party of Germany, the republic is eventually crushed by the Freikorps; Landauer is killed in prison. Combatants on the Freikorps side include Ernst Kantorowicz, later famous as a historian.
April and October – The English writers Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby return after war service to complete their degree courses at Somerville College, Oxford.
June – The Algonquin Round Table of writers, critics, actors and wits led by Alexander Woollcott first meets at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City.
July 29 – Alfred Harcourt and Donald Brace set up the publishing company Harcourt, Brace & Howe in New York City.
August 29 – The State Library of Latvia, predecessor of the National Library, is founded in Riga based on the collection of its first chief librarian, Jānis Misiņš.
October 28 – Arthur Ransome leaves Russia with his future wife Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, previously Trotsky's secretary, carrying a diplomatic message for Estonia.
November – The literary monthly The London Mercury is launched with J. C. Squire as editor.
November 19 – An American expatriate, Sylvia Beach, opens the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris.
November 29 – The Großes Schauspielhaus opens as a theater in Berlin, with an interior designed by Hans Poelzig. It begins with the director Max Reinhardt's production of the Oresteia.
December – T. E. Lawrence loses most of the manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom while changing trains at Reading in England en route from the Paris Peace Conference to Oxford.
unknown dates
*The column "By the Way" and the pen name Beachcomber in the London newspaper the Daily Express are taken over by D. B. Wyndham Lewis as a humorous feature.
*Singer House in Petrograd is allocated to the Petrograd State Publishing House, quickly becoming the city's largest bookstore. It will be known subsequently as Дом Книги.

New books

Poetry

E. J. Brady – The House of the Winds
Uri Zvi Greenberg – In tsaytns roysh
Siegfried Sassoon – The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon
August Stramm – Tropfblut
Giuseppe Ungaretti
*Allegria di naufragi
*La guerra
Louis Untermeyer – ''Modern American Poetry''

Non-fiction

Henri Bergson – L'Energie spirituelle: essais et conférences
Francis P. Duffy with Joyce Kilmer – Father Duffy's Story: A Tale of Humor and Heroism, Of Life and Death with the Fighting Sixty-Ninth
Johan Huizinga – The Waning of the Middle Ages
William Inge – Outspoken Essays
John Maynard Keynes – The Economic Consequences of the Peace
Karl Kraus – Weltgericht
Dorothy Lawrence – Sapper Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier
H. L. Mencken – The American Language
Arthur Ransome – Six Weeks in Russia 1919
John Reed – Ten Days That Shook the World
Carl Sandburg – The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919
Prof. William Strunk, Jr. – The Elements of Style
H. G. Wells – The Outline of History
Arthur Graeme West – The Diary of a Dead Officer
Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley – ''Gardens, their Form and Design''

Births

January 1 – J. D. Salinger, American novelist
January 7 – Robert Duncan, American poet
January 10 – Ugo Sansonetti, Italian writer and masters athlete
January 20 – Silva Kaputikyan, Armenian poet
January 24 – Juan Eduardo Zúñiga, Spanish fiction writer, literary scholar and translator
January 25 – Edwin Newman, American writer and journalist
January 29 – N. F. Simpson, English absurdist playwright
February 14 – Miroslav Zikmund, Czech adventurer, travel writer and film director
March 18 – G. E. M. Anscombe, Irish-born English analytic philosopher
March 24
*Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American beat poet, writer, publisher, painter, socialist activist and bookseller
*Robert Heilbroner, American economic philosopher
*Graciela Palau de Nemes, Cuban-born literary critic
April 15 – Emyr Humphreys, Welsh novelist and poet
April 24 – Mihu Dragomir, Romanian poet, journalist and short story writer
May 7 – Robert H. Adleman, American novelist and historian
May 16 – John Robinson, English Bible scholar, religious writer and bishop
May 17 – Merle Miller, American biographer and screenwriter
June 6 – Helen Forrester, English memoirist and novelist
June 8 – Władysław Siemaszko, Polish publicist, lawyer and writer
June 27 – Jaswant Singh Kanwal, Punjabi novelist
June 28 – Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu, Romanian philosopher, novelist and dramatist
July 9 – Denys Rhodes, Irish-born novelist
July 15 – Iris Murdoch, Irish-born novelist
July 23
*Davis Grubb, American novelist and short story writer
*Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Argentine comic book writer
July 31 – Primo Levi, Italian novelist and memoirist
August 1 – Stanley Middleton, English novelist
August 4 – Michel Déon, French writer
August 31 – Amrita Pritam, Punjabi poet and novelist
September 13
* Mary Midgley, English philosopher
* George Weidenfeld, Viennese-born English publisher
September 23 – Tōta Kaneko, Japanese writer
September 26 – Matilde Camus, Spanish poet
October 22 – Doris Lessing, Persian-born English novelist
November 18 – Jocelyn Brando, American actress and writer
November 23 – P. F. Strawson, English philosopher
November 26 – Frederik Pohl, American science fiction author
November 29 – Frank Kermode, Manx-born literary critic
December 6 – Paul de Man, Belgian-born literary critic
December 17
*Charlotte Jay, Australian suspense writer
*Es'kia Mphahlele, South African writer

Deaths

January 2 – Eliza Putnam Heaton, American journalist and editor
January 4 – Matilda Betham-Edwards, English novelist, poet and travel writer
January 11 – Kazimierz Zalewski, Polish dramatist, critic and publisher
January 15 – Rosa Luxemburg, Polish-born German revolutionary socialist
January 31 – Paul Lindau, German dramatist
February 24 – Mary Ann Maitland, Scottish-born Canadian author
February 26 – Anne Thackeray Ritchie, English novelist and essayist
May 2 – Gustav Landauer, German philosopher and revolutionary
May 6 – L. Frank Baum, children's writer
May 10 – Ferdinando Fontana, Italian journalist, dramatist, and poet
May 17 – Guido von List, Viennese poet, dramatist, and occultist
May 30 – Barbu Nemțeanu, Romanian poet and translator
June 14 – Weedon Grossmith, English writer, actor and playwright
June 19 – Petre P. Carp, Romanian politician, polemicist, and translator
June 23 – Kolachalam Srinivasa Rao, Indian dramatist
July 8 – John Fox, Jr., American novelist and short story writer
August 6 – Ada Langworthy Collier, American author
August 10 – Cynthia Morgan St. John, American Wordsworthian, book collector, and author
August 11 – Andrew Carnegie, Scottish American industrialist and writer
September 12 – Leonid Andreyev, Russian dramatist, novelist and short-story writer
October 22 – W. N. P. Barbellion, English naturalist and diarist
October 30 – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American author and poet
November 3 – Abraham Valdelomar, Peruvian poet, essayist and dramatist
November 20 – Jane Lippitt Patterson, American writer and editor
December 19 – Alice Moore McComas, American author, editor, lecturer and reformer

Awards

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction : Hugh Walpole, The Secret City
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography : Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon – A Memoir
Nobel Prize for Literature: Carl Spitteler
Prix Goncourt: Marcel Proust, A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Margaret Widdemer, Old Road to Paradise and Carl Sandburg, Corn Huskers
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Booth Tarkington, ''The Magnificent Ambersons''

In literature

Opening of J. G. Farrell's novel ''Troubles''

1919 in literature

Events

New books

Fiction

Children and young people

Drama

Poetry

Non-fiction

Births

Deaths

Awards

In literature